phoenix

or phe·nix

noun

(sometimes initial capital letter)a mythical bird of great beauty fabled to live 500 or 600 years in the Arabian wilderness, to burn itself on a funeral pyre, and to rise from its ashes in the freshness of youth and live through another cycle of years: often an emblem of immortality or of reborn idealism or hope.

phoenix

[ (fee-niks) ]

A mythical bird that periodically burned itself to death and emerged from the ashes as a new phoenix. According to most stories, the rebirth of the phoenix happened every five hundred years. Only one phoenix lived at a time.

Note

To “rise like a phoenix from the ashes” is to overcome a seemingly insurmountable setback.